The sight of six men unloading a huge Christmas tree in the blistering Orlando sun is surreal. This 47ft monster will stand proud in the piazza at Loews Portofino Bay Hotel, one of Universal Studios' six Orlando hotels. This year, the theme park giant has pulled out all the festive stops. More than 80 Christmas trees, draped with 2,000 ft of garlands, have sprung up across the hotels. At the wonderfully retro Cabana Bay Beach Resort, there's enough shiny silver tinsel to entangle Santa's entire workforce, and over the speakers, Eartha Kitt croons Santa Baby. While at the Hard Rock...

The narratives of the midterm elections were set when suburban voters turned against President Trump, women racked up record numbers of electoral wins and Republicans dominated rural states and counties. But dive deeper into the results and some more surprising storylines emerge, from familial ties to long shot candidates, expanding suburbs and new battlegrounds. Here are the overlooked stories that didn’t get enough coverage after the polls closed. Did Puerto Ricans elect Rick Scott? When Hurricane Maria left Puerto Rico devastated in 2017, almost 400,000 of the island’s residents moved to the mainland. Many of them landed in Florida, where...

A family's nearly two-decade wait to find out who killed their beloved daughter came to an end this month, as investigators announced an arrest in the cold case. The Orlando Police Department said Monday that 38-year-old Benjamin L. Holmes was arrested in the murder of Christina Franke. Franke was 25 and a student at the University of Central Florida majoring in education when she was found dead in her Audubon Park apartment in October 2001, according to FOX35. The college student had been robbed and assaulted, and her killer had left a large amount of DNA at the scene, police...

With Veterans Day around the corner and 71 percent of VA medical centers recently demonstrating increases in quality in the past year, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its report on 2018’s Best & Worst Places for Veterans to Live as well as accompanying videos. The report compares the 100 largest U.S. cities across 18 key metrics, ranging from share of military skill-related jobs to housing affordability to availability of VA health facilities. Best Cities for Veterans 1. Austin, TX 2. Scottsdale, AZ 3. Colorado Springs, CO 4. Raleigh, NC 5. Gilbert, AZ 6. Plano, TX 7. Virginia Beach, VA...

ORLANDO, Fla. - President Donald Trump visited Orlando Monday to speak at the International Association of Chiefs of Police Annual Convention. It was the president's first public appearance since his Supreme Court pick, Brett Kavanaugh, just barely cleared the final hurdle for Senate confirmation. Kavanaugh had been accused of sexual misconduct by several women.

President Donald Trump is traveling to Florida aboard Air Force One with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and will likely discuss his future at the Justice Department. When reporters asked if he had plans to fire Rosenstein, Trump replied, “No, I don’t.” (snip) “We’re going to be talking on the plane. I actually have a good relationship. … We’ll see,” he told reporters at the White House as he left for the trip. “I get along very well with him.”

An unruly passenger was arrested Thursday morning at Orlando International Airport and the incident was caught on camera. Jeffrey Epstein is charged with battery on a law enforcement officer, resisting arrest, trespassing after a warning and disorderly conduct, according to an arrest affidavit from the Orlando Police Department. Police said they were called to investigate reports of an unruly passenger at the American Airlines ticket counter just before 6 a.m. Police said that Epstein began to yell when he saw the officers arrive. After talking with police, Epstein began to calm down, but became agitated when he learned the airline...

Florida's busiest airport is becoming the first in the nation to require a face scan of passengers on all arriving and departing international flights, including U.S. citizens, according to officials there. The expected announcement Thursday at Orlando International Airport alarms some privacy advocates who say there are no formal rules in place for handling data gleaned from the scans, nor formal guidelines on what should happen if a passenger is wrongly prevented from boarding. Airports in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and Washington already use face scans for some departing international flights,

Attorneys for Noor Salman are calling for a dismissal of charges or a mistrial after they say new details from prosecutors reveal that Pulse gunman Omar Mateen’s father was an FBI informant who is currently under a criminal investigation. According to a motion filed by the defense, Assistant US Attorney Sara Sweeney sent an email on Saturday to the defense — in the middle of the Salman’s trial — that stated Seddique Mateen was a confidential FBI source from 2005 through June 2016. The email also stated that Seddique Mateen is being investigated for money transfers to Turkey and Pakistan...

The Orlando nightclub shooter's dad – revealed to be an FBI informant – told authorities who were investigating Omar Mateen before the attack that pro-terror comments the would-be gunman made to coworkers were just examples of him “being stupid," an agent testified Monday. FBI Special Agent Juvenal Martin, who was on the stand in the terrorism trial of Noor Salman, Omar Mateen’s wife, said Omar's father, Seddique, had called him while his son was being investigated for the comments in 2006, a decade before the Pulse attack, and was upset. Martin testified Seddique told him something like “if he had...

An unanswered question in the Florida gun debate: What to do with existing guns? That’s the scary ass headline hovering over a tampabaytimes.com article written in the aftermath of Florida’s new gun control legislation. The implication is clear: Dems don’t think it’s enough to ban “assault weapons” (which the new bill does not do). Something must be done to disarm MSR-armed civilians. No really . . . When the Senate debated SB 7026— the gun legislation that just landed on Gov. Rick Scott’s desk — Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando sponsored an amendments that would have banned the “sale or transfer”...

Jury selection begins Thursday in the trial of the Pulse shooter's widow. Jury selection is under way this morning in downtown Orlando in the case against Noor Salman, the widow of Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen. Salman, 31, is charged with aiding and abetting her husband in supporting a foreign terror organization, the Islamic State, and obstructing justice. Her husband was killed by police hours after he began shooting in the Orlando club June 12, 2016, killing 49 people and wounding dozens more. About 5 a.m. Bob Kunst of Miami Beach parked across the federal courthouse in Orlando, armed with...

Ticket prices at Walt Disney World will increase, effective Sunday. The hike comes as Disney tries to even out attendance throughout the year so guests aren’t stuck waiting in line and have a better time. Walt Disney World posted record-breaking attendance in the quarter that ended in December, Disney executives said during an earnings call Tuesday with investors. The cost increase will vary from park to park as well as which day since Disney offers a three-tiered system for peak, regular and value tickets. Annual passes, including those for Florida residents, are also on the rise. At the gate, a...

ang up those baseball cleats, Timmy, and start getting into football shape. I’m talking to you, Tim Tebow, because you will no doubt be the No. 1 draft pick and starting quarterback of the inevitable Orlando team when the XFL reinvents itself and begins play once again in 2020. WWE founder and chairman Vince McMahon announced Thursday he is going to re-start the XFL — the league McMahon and NBC unveiled for one forgettable season back in 2001. McMahon, obviously seeing an opening and wanting to take financial advantage of the NFL’s sagging popularity, struck all the right chords during...

Drivers from northern states that use the E-ZPass system for toll roads will be able to use their passes to drive on some Central Florida toll roads — and get the same discount SunPass users receive.Central Florida drivers, however, will not be able to use their EPasses to pay for tolls if they travel to the 16 E-ZPass states, including New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois and South Carolina.“One of our main objectives is to improve the ease and uninterrupted travel that E-ZPass customers enjoy, and portability to the Sunshine State is certainly a common request,” E-ZPass Group Executive Director P.J. Wilkins...

“Isis executioner who threw gay men off buildings bribed his way out of prison in ‘minutes,'” by Josh Robbins, International Business Times, January 9, 2018: A notorious Isis henchman accused of beheading gay men and throwing them off rooftops has escaped from police custody just minutes after being arrested in Iraq. Abu Omer – known as “White Beard” thanks to his impressive facial hair – was arrested in Mosul at the beginning of the year. Local and international media reported his detention but now it seems that the sadistic jihadi was back on the road in no time at all....

The wife of Omar Mateen, who committed a massacre in the Pulse nightclub in 2016, reportedly told the FBI that she knew about his plot beforehand — and did nothing to stop it. Noor Salman — whose husband gunned down 49 people in the club — told investigators that she “knew that her husband was going to attack the Pulse nightclub” when he left the house on the night of June 11 last year, according to documents obtained by USA Today. “My fears had come true and he did what he said he was going to do,” Salman said, according...

Five people were shot Sunday morning and Interstate 4 was shut down in what at witnesses said was a running gun battle between several cars near the tourist district, Orlando police said. Officers arrived at Kirkman Road north of International Drive shortly before 2:30 a.m. and found a man shot in the face in critical but stable condition, Lt. Jonathan Bigelow said in a statement. A witness said people in two cars were shooting at each other while driving northbound on Kirkman, a road that cuts through the northern part of the tourist district. Several rifle and handgun casings were...

Florida lawmakers demonstrated wisdom, foresight and fiscal responsibility in 2014 when they combined county expressway authorities in Central Florida into a single, regional agency. Roads don’t stop at county lines, and it’s inefficient and expensive to maintain multiple bureaucracies to control separate stretches of pavement. It’s also a problem when neighboring toll-road agencies have conflicting policies and plans for the future. Yet the rationale behind that 2014 law hasn’t been completely realized yet. It’s time for lawmakers to step in again. Dueling road agencies The Central Florida Expressway Authority now owns and operates 118 miles of toll roads in Metro...